Why you shouldn’t be reading Chow or Shoe
There is no denying that John Chow and Shoemoney are gods among men when it comes to making money online. Shoe’s infamous AdSense check it just amazing. And Chow’s monthly income reports are worthy of envy. But if you want to make money online you should not be reading Chow and Shoe.Chow and Shoe have been making money online for quite some time. (And this gringo actually subscribes to both of their feeds.) But when it comes to learning how to make more money online I learn more from newer blogs than I do from Chow and Shoe. You see, they’re like a well-oiled machine. They have gotten to a point where an impressive monthly online income is seemingly effortless to them. They are not having to scour the web for new ways to make money because they are already making money. And plenty of it from the looks of things.If you’re reading Chow and Shoe then it needs to be for motivation purposes only. What John Chow dines on and who sent Shoemoney a free shirt are not going to help you make more money online.
How can you make money online?
Want to know how to make money online? If so, just watch this little video.
10 Blog Traffic Tips
In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:www.BlogMastermind.com
Tips on getting traffic to a new blog
Earlier this month blog mastermind Yaro Stark posted a podcast on his site that all wannbe bloggers should check out. The podcast is - How much traffic should a new blog have after months? It is only a half hour and worth a listen. The podcast is with one of his blog mastermind students who managed to grow his blog from a handful of readers a day to thousands a day. It is pretty impressive. For more free info from Yaro, check out this Blog Profits Blueprint report. Click here to download the Blog Profits Blueprint.
Is completely passive income a myth?
Last week I discussed the difference between passive and active income. But some people out there suggest that completely passive income is a myth.So, I ask you - is completely passive income a myth?In my experience, no. It is real.Here are some examples of my passive income streams.Over a year ago I was writing articles for Associated Content on a fairly regular basis. At the time I needed some extra cash and this was active income for me. I have not written for Associated Content since December of last year. However I make money from Associated Content each month. See, a while back they started a program where you got a page view bonus for your articles each month. So, each month I make around $50 in completely passive income even though I have not written anything for them in almost a year.Affiliate programs are great passive income earners. Amazon Associates is a fave passive income earner of mine. And the great thing about it is that people end up buying more than just one thing usually.Google Adsense is also a passive income earner in a sense. Sure, the only work you do technically is put up the html code on your site. However, you do have to generate traffic to your site to get those clicks.Ebooks and edocuments are another great way to earn passive income. You only have to create those items once and then promo them some way. After that you just wait for the sales. I have a $4.99 item that sells regularly that I created over 2 years ago. I typically make around $125 a month from this item but have made as much as $450 a month from this item. To this day I still sell this item.
The difference between active and passive income
You see a lot of people that are talking about passive income on their blogs. You see a lot of people that do those monthly income reports where they list “passive income” as one of their earners. If you pay attention to those sites you will notice something. Some people make a ton of passive income and some don’t. If you dig a little deeper you will notice that some of those big earners are including active income in their passive income column. But you don’t hear people talking about active income.There is a difference between passive income and active income. Active income is when you are constantly working to create income. For instance, having a blog that you update regularly that brings in money is technically active income. Getting paid to evaluate products on your blog is one-time active income. In its simplest form that is what active income is - you do something one time and you get income one time and there is no opportunity for recurring income from that activity.Passive income is the opposite. Passive income is when you earn income on something over and over that you only had to actively work on once. Passive income is income that tends to be recurring and requires no additional work after the initial output. Blog posts that have some adsense in them that get a lot of traffic is a great source of passive income if you get a lot of traffic and click throughs. Another great example of a passive income earner is an affiliate program. You throw the link up once and people click on it and you earn money until you take it down or until they end their subscription to the affiliate product.
Is joining the “Make Money Online” niche a mistake?
Do you think that joining the “Make Money Online” niche is a mistake? Would you join it or do you think it’s overcrowded? Jim Karter at Make Money Online seems to think so. This gringo disagrees.I think that the key is that you have to make your blog stand out some way. Why? Because tons of schmucks are starting up how to make money online blogs. So yes, it is overcrowded. But you just need to stand out from the crowd.
What’s up with the million peso quest?
From the looks of things, this site looks pretty abandoned, yes? I admit it. I have been working on other projects. It’s true. But I am still wanting to make a million pesos. Of course, I am super far behind. So, what does that mean?That means that I have less than three months before the end of the year. That means I have to haul ass. And that is just what I plan to do.
The best digital SLR camera - the Nikon D90 12.3 megapixel
Check out the newest digital SLR camera on the market - the new Nikon D90.
The release of the new Nikon D90 Digital SLR Camera w/ AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Lens was just announced TODAY and it is NOW AVAILABLE for pre-order from Ritz Camera. Be sure to take advantage of this pre-order opportunity as they offer no sales tax and free shipping!
The D90’s creative potential explodes with the capability to record smooth 24fps, motion JPEG sound movie clips. Leveraging the D90’s 12.3-megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor, legendary NIKKOR optical quality and the one-button Live View function, the D-Movie Mode gives still photographers a new and exciting way to express themselves in 720p HD!
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You can also get this item from Amazon.com. See image below for the current lowest price on Amazon.com.
I heart vague rejection notices
I do a lot of paid blogging opps. And I love when I get vague rejection notices. Like this little gem:
We are unable to approve this post. You have not met the advertisers requirements. Please be sure to read all the advertisers requirements before posting paid ops.
Wow. Thanks, I really know just what to fix now.
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Sponsors
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Progress
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Goal: 1,000,000 MXN
Current: 64,288.69 MXN
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The Donation Piñata
Help this gringo out with a little donation!
I'm trying to get to one million pesos by 12/31/08.
As of March 31, I am at 64,288.69 MXN.
For more on my progress, click here. -
The exchange rate
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The goal? 1,000,000 Mexican Pesos.
Current exchange rate as of 4/15/08 is 1.00 MXN = 0.10 USD.
So, 1,000,000 MXN = 95,350.23 USD.
Check out the Currency Converter at XE.com.
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Mexican Flavor of the Moment
Laura Elena Harring
